My American Revolution

by Robert Sullivan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

In recent years, the author, who has written about subjects ranging from Thoreau to rats, found himself in the grip of an obsession with the American Revolution, and began tracing the progress of the revolutionary armies across the New York City region. His account is historically fascinating and deeply personal. Sullivan journeys with friends to places like a Bronx golf course that was once a battlefield. He seems most able to immerse himself in history when alone, whether hiking the Continental Army’s thirty-mile route from Princeton to Morristown, New Jersey, or simply surveying the terrain from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. He writes, “I felt as if phases of the war were mingling, battles from the beginning mixing with surrenders toward the end, mixing even with more recent times, when people reconsidered the Revolution.” ♦

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